A Christmas Bonus: Christopher Hitchens' analysis of the Nativity Story

[ProfessorPlum]

Run time: 07:26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi-Ocy4R9Zs   Posted on YouTube: December 06, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 09, 2009 By DU Member: ProfessorPlum Views on DU: 879

 
and the historicity of Jesus. Hilarious and piercing analysis.

[thereismore]

1. Stupid, hysterical women. Nice one. Does not add to the credibility of his words... nt

[ProfessorPlum]

2. He is mocking the ancient view of women in bronze age Palestine

his words at that point are sarcastic.

[thereismore]

4. I didn't get that. nt

[ProfessorPlum]

5. Hmmm. Sarcasm loses its punch when it has to be explained

but I'll try. He is deliberately using the term "hysterical" in all of its uterine precedent here, to give you a feeling that in the culture of the time (and in many modern Muslim cultures, as he gets a dig in), the testimony of women would have been insufficient. If you are going to make a story like this up out of whole cloth, he implies, why not put the words of the resurrection into the mouths of more credible - meaning more credible at the time - witnesses. Such as a male leader of the Jewish community, or someone with some real power. To record the most incredible claim of the faith through what would have been - again, at the time - dismissible witnesses indicates that something remains there of historical importance or salience.

Hitch is many things - polemical, inebriated, a dirty debate fighter, and a deliberate contrarian with whom I don't always agree - but he is not usually a misogynist (see his weird diatribe on whether women can be funny for an exception). And the context of this clip is a debate about the existence of God with Dinesh D'Sousa. He would have kept any such glaringly ugly sentiments out of his own presentation at this wrapping up point - to do so (even if he actually felt that way) would be to unnecessarily alienate half of his audience. He uses them here in the context of defining just how un-credible female witnesses would have been viewed at the time of the writing of the gospels.

Does that make sense? Listen to it again, in the context of coming from a seasoned debater.

[thereismore]

6. Yes, I got it now. Thanks. nt

[thereismore]

7. And yet, the fact that they did use the testimony of women

indicates to me that the story is true. Here is how: If the whole thing about a missing body is fabricated, wouldn't it be easier and "more convincing" to make up a testimony of a few men instead of women? Yet they did use women. One reason could have been that this was indeed true and they felt compelled to report it as such. Who in his right mind would fabricate something so important and use a handful of women as proof if it weren't true in the first place?

[ProfessorPlum]

8. That's CH's argument. He sees that as lending a kernel of truth

to the gospel stories.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. At the time Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth would have lived, the inhabitants of

the Roman province of Iudaea would have been deluded Iron Age people.